Mobile paper shredders have been used for many years to shred paper and other office related feedstock. One example of such a prior mobile paper shredder is U.S. Pat. No. 5,542,617, issued to David E. Rajewski on Aug. 6, 1996, which is hereby incorporated by this reference into this application as though fully set forth herein.
An important part of any paper shredding operation is the material handling aspects, i.e., how the feedstock is received, controlled and delivered to the shredder, and also how it is discharged and handled after it is shredded. This becomes more important in mobile shredding applications where space and other time limitations affect operations more.
While there are still may mobile shredding units which utilize a hand feed by the operator, there are also automated feed units such as that disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,542,617, wherein an effective lift system is used to provide the feedstock to the input hopper.
If feedstock is fed to the shredder too fast, the shredder tends to jam and breakdown, whereas if it is fed too slow, the shredding process takes an unnecessarily long time. On the output side, if the shredded material exiting the shredder is inefficiently handled while being moved to the storage area, it can result in delays in the operations and possibly clogging of the shredder.
Since there is limited storage area in mobile shredders, the more the shredded material may be compacted while it is being moved to the storage area, the more efficient the mobile operation will be and the higher capacity it will have for a given sized truck or storage area.
It is one object of this invention to provide a more efficient and effective feedstock and shredded material handling system for use in connection with a high speed shredder, from where the feedstock is received in the hopper, to where it stored in the storage compartment of the vehicle.
After exiting the shredder and being placed in the storage area, the shredded material must then be removed from the truck or other storage area and thereafter handled. In many situations, the shredded material is preferably placed in a baler and thereby compacted into bales of resale. The baler feedstock, i.e. the shredded material, has similar demands to the shredder application, i.e. efficient input, compacting and efficient delivery of the output material to the baler compartment.
The feedstock and shredded material handling system provided by this invention (without the shredder) has the additional feature of facilitating the efficient handling of shredded material as baler feedstock, into a baler compartment, such as a paper baling apparatus, as is more fully described below.